Nirodbaran
Talks with Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1
10 December 1938 – 14 January 1941
29 November 1939
Nirodbaran: What is the significance of the experience in which the being is uplifted from the crust of the physical?
Sri Aurobindo: It is the liberation of consciousness by its rising upwards, free from the physical crust. Ordinarily it is this physical crust that prevents the consciousness from going within or upwards. What makes you ask?
Nirodbaran: Sahana had the experience, and she wants to know the significance. Just before Darshan she felt as if her whole being were uplifted from the physical crust which appeared like a hollow case. The experience lasted one or two days.
Sri Aurobindo: When any descent takes place, this crust prevents one from feeling it, but when the crust is removed the ascent can take place more easily and the higher force can also be brought down. It is the physical crust that gives the most opposition. There is, of course, the vital opposition too but the physical is stronger. Did Sahana have no such experience before?
Nirodbaran: I don’t know. When such a liberation takes place, does it mean that the physical crust also becomes thinner?
Satyendra: What did you say? Liberation makes the body thin?
Sri Aurobindo: Then the complete liberation will make the body ultimately disappear!
Nirodbaran: No, I said the “crust”.
Satyendra: Is it in continuation of your other day’s question?
Sri Aurobindo: No, somebody had an experience of liberation. (To Nirodbaran) You passed her experience on and kept the crust perhaps for yourself?
Nirodbaran: Her experience came first.
Sri Aurobindo: Then she passed on to you the crust.
Nirodbaran: Does this experience mean a new stage in sadhana?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Satyendra: You said to somebody that the Adya Shakti, the Primal Goddess-Power of the Supermind, brings down the Supermind.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes.
Satyendra: Brings from where?
Sri Aurobindo: From the higher planes.
Satyendra: There is also the Unmanifest?
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, from the Unmanifest comes the Manifest.
Nirodbaran: Some people find your book The Mother very difficult.
Sri Aurobindo: I don’t see what is the difficulty there.
Nirodbaran: No, it is not the style but the idea that they find difficult to grasp. The Chinese professor who is here read it and couldn’t follow. After reading Anilbaran’s book Songs from the Soul, many things became clear to him.
Sri Aurobindo: Then it must be the difficulty of the mind which is not prepared.
A small ulceration had formed during the two preceding days on Sri Aurobindo’s right shin.
Sri Aurobindo (when his leg was being sponged): How is the ulcer?
Nirodbaran: Looks better.
Sri Aurobindo: It is the physical crust going the wrong way? (Laughter)
Nirodbaran: I thought it was the starting-point of eczema.
Sri Aurobindo: No, eczema starts with a vesicle.
Satyendra: You had eczema there?
Sri Aurobindo: That was due to blankets and mosquito bites in jail.
Evening
Dr. Becharlal (after a long preparatory silence): How to see God in others? You say it can’t be done by the mind.
Sri Aurobindo: By increasing the consciousness and making the psychic more active.
Just at this point the Mother came in and the talk was suspended.
Purani (while sponging Sri Aurobindo): There is a story, told originally by Lalji, of a Mahratta lady. In ecstatic moments of some descent from above, she can explain the Gita and other scriptures, though she herself is not educated. In those moments her face takes on a blue colour. She says the descent is that of her true Divine Self. But what is this blue colour?
Sri Aurobindo: The Divine Self means the Atman. Does she follow the Adwaita path? The Atman has no colour. Maybe the blue is of some being. She doesn’t know herself?
Purani: No. Could it be Krishna’s light?
Sri Aurobindo: Possibly – or Vishnu’s.
Purani: Krishnamurti is giving some new principles now, but they are so amorphous. He says that to realise the Reality a Guru is not necessary. One has only to get rid of preconceived notions and ideas.
Sri Aurobindo: That is nothing new and can be easily understood. What further?
Purani: Then one will find one’s own Truth and Reality. But when someone asked, “What is this Reality?”, he replied, “No one can say. One has to find it out for oneself.”
Sri Aurobindo: Then what is the necessity of his saying the rest also? He may as well say nothing. Each one will find out his own path and Truth.
Satyendra: Though he has relinquished Theosophy and Messiahhood, old disciples still seem to run after him.
Sri Aurobindo: Why doesn’t he close his doors against them? He can stop speaking to them.
Satyendra: He has started with a handicap – having been proclaimed a Messiah.
Sri Aurobindo: That is why he is disgusted with Guruship perhaps. The Reality he speaks of seems to be like Tao. When you realise it you can’t speak about it. It is simply “nothing at all”.